heard the beginning of the year at a house in
Cock Lane, West Smithfield." Having read
the said account, let the said ghost-keeper or
Medium answer to our catechism on the
History of Knockers in a simple way. Q.
Who was the first Medium ? A. Little Miss
Parsons. Q. Who was she ? A. The daughter
of the clerk of St. Sepulchre's. Q. How
did the spirit-knocking in her case begin ?
A. Her father, the clerk, had taken as lodgers
a gentleman and lady, and in the absence of
the gentleman, little Miss Parsons slept with
the lady, who was called Miss Fanny. Miss
Fanny complained one morning that she and
her bedfellow had been disturbed all night by
noises. The noises continued, and at length
excited much attention, but the lady and
gentleman removed into the neighbourhood
of Clerkenwell (where Miss Fanny presently
died), and then the noise in Parsons' house
was discontinued. Q. You have said that
the first Medium was little Miss Parsons;
in what way do you connect the story
of the Cock Lane Ghost with her, and
discover the resemblance that exists between
that child and yourself ? A. Eighteen months
after Miss Fanny left the Parsonses, and in
the beginning of the year 1762, the noises
recommenced, and it is recorded of little Miss
Parsons, that the child, upon certain knockings
and scratchings, which seemed to proceed
from beneath her bedstead, was sometimes
thrown into violent fits and agitations; and a
woman attendant, or the father, Mr. Parsons,
put questions to the spirit or ghost, as it was
supposed by the credulous to be, and they
had also dictated how many knocks should
serve for an answer, either in the affirmative
or negative. Now this plan, invented by
little Miss Parsons, differs in no material
respect from my own. Q. What was the
object of Miss Parsons and her friends ? A.
The ghost declared itself to be the ghost of
the deceased Miss Fanny, and its business was
to accuse the gentleman of having poisoned
her by giving to her arsenic in a glass of purl
when she was ill of small-pox. Q. Was not
that very wicked? A. It was very capitally
done. Little Miss Parsons was removed from
house to house, but the noises followed her,
the ghost protesting that she would follow
her wherever she went, and the exhibition
was exceedingly attractive; for, as it is said in
the Annual Register, "numbers of persons of
fortune and character, and several clergymen,
assisted at the vagaries of the invisible
knocker and scratcher." Q. Were the
pretensions of this girl seriously tested? A. Yes,
they were, she was tied up in a hammock
with her feet and hands bound apart from
one another, but the ghost refused then to
make its knockings audible. The spirit had
also promised by an affirmative knock, that it
would attend three gentlemen into the vault
under St. John's church, and knock in their
presence upon the coffin (Miss Fanny's)
wherein lay her body. Q. I think I remember
some lines by Churchill on the subject of
this expedition to the vault. Can you repeat
some of them? A. I can, for I have found
them in the Register. They begin "Dark
was the night," and after exactly a hundred
lines of exordium by which the expectation
of the reader is prepared, they proceed in ten
lines more to disclaim all straining after false
effect, and then relate in a single couplet the
adventure of the descent to the vault:
    "Silent all three went in; about
    All three turn'd silent, and came out."

Q. What was the end of the story of the
Cock Lane Ghost ? A. The condemnation
of poor Mr. Parsons to the pillory. Q. May
you not conclude from this, that spirit-
knocking is unsuited to the genius of this
country ? A. I do not know. The people
pitied Mr. Parsons, and no egg was lifted up
against him.

The Fox family, by whom this ghostly
rapping was revived in America not many
years ago, were so successful in their venture
—retiring very soon upon a little independence
—that the spirit trade, as carried on by them,
became at once an established business. A
ghost in Rhode Island, improving upon the
practice of his ancestor in Cock Lane, induced
a young woman to give a dose of arsenic to
her stepbrother. In Oneida County there
sprang up an association of persons who had
become, as they said, impressed by the
intimacy which was springing up between the
world of flesh and the world of spirits. These
people, taking the coarse view of things that
superstition favours, believed that we were
on the point of realising that state of affairs
of which we read in Moore's Loves of the
Angels, or in Byron's Heaven and Earth.
"Spirits," they said, "are beginning to have
power to form friendships and connexions
with mortals," and since, as they declared, it
would be wicked to form contracts that might
interfere with the rights, and defeat the
unknown possible desires, of spirits, two hundred
men and sixty women—having a few mediums,
no doubt, among their number—abolished
marriages. Emboldened by the credulity of
thousands who believed in the establishment
of a direct communication with the spirit
world, some blasphemous persons at Auburn,
in the State of New York—determined that
no dark recess of profanity, out of which gold
could be taken, should be left unvisited—
published a newspaper, conducted by the
Apostles and the Prophets, under the
direction of the Lord Supreme! We quote
from the prospectus, simply stating that the
publication of the newspaper therein
announced did really take place, and was, in
fact, a very dreary sample of the lucubrations
of the Rappers. "This publication," the
prospectus said, "is dictated by spirits out of
the flesh, and by them edited, superintended,
and controlled. Its object is, the disclosure
of truth from Heaven, guiding mankind into